The Seven Loves Of Robert Crawley
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: Written for the challenge on the Downton Forum.


A/N: Written for the Seven Loves challenge on the Downton Forum. Check it out on my profile!

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><p>The Seven Loves of Robert Crawley<p>

**1. Platonic/Family.**

Robert never has a cross word from his Father. His Mama is full of admonishments both gentle and …not, but his Father is a silent, almost grave man who cares for his children but remains rather detached from them. He understands and expects all Fathers are like that, no matter what Rosamund might call their Papa under her breath when she thinks no one is listening, and Robert learns what he can about deportment and being a man.

He loves his Father deeply and when the old Lord Grantham dies Robert can think of many happy memories but cannot think of any single incident that makes him feel loved by the man. He cannot help but remember all the times he needed someone when he was growing up and his irascible, indomitable was ever-present. She might not be soft, she might not be easy, but Violet Crawley loves him fiercely and it takes Robert till he is the Lord himself to realise that.

**2. First love.**

When he's thirteen no one in the world blazes quite as brightly as his sister. She's brilliant and bold and looks after him with a blatant disregard for their parent's insistence that her influence upon him wasn't right for a boy who would be an Earl one day. She sneaks him the more _interesting_books in their Father's library, knowing she will get the blame for their disappearance and she makes him laugh in a way no one else will until he marries.

And then one day, quite suddenly, she's gone and he feels her loss more than he knows he should. He knew she'd have to get married someday as he knows he himself will but he can't help but feel like it's too soon. Simply too soon to have the easiness of youth snatched away from them both – she to grace society and he to seek a rich bride. He lets her go not because his Mama tells him he must, but because he has to.

Rosamund is his first love. She is the first person he knows he loves because she is the first person he misses.

**3. One-sided love.**

When he marries he's terrified. Not of marriage itself of course. He knows what it entails and has been preparing himself for an aloof society bride who would fill his Mama's shoes admirably. He could have coped with a wife like that. A wife he had anticipated, who would feel the same amount of fondness for him and they could live a pleasant life together and never have too much worry. A wife who knew what she was doing and Robert knew what he was doing in marrying her.

Instead he marries Cora Levinson.

She scared him as much as she intrigues him. He likes her: he wouldn't have married her otherwise would he? And she has a lot of money, which is very useful and all in all it's a good match, whatever his Mother might say. But she loves him. And this scares him. Because he doesn't love her.

Perhaps he will? She's lovely and warm and seems so sad every time he can't look at her with the same adoration that he wishes with everything he has that he could love her. He just can't. And the thought of spending his whole life never being able to love her terrifies him.

**4. Romantic love.**

The love that flows between the pages of the books he keeps hidden from his family and staff is something he doesn't think human beings can achieve. It's passionate and melodramatic and for the character there is nothing but love, nothing but a beating heart and skin and heavy breathing by all accounts.

There is nothing of duty. Of sacrifice. Well, not the sacrifice that he has come to associate with love. The true sacrifice of giving up something that defines you – in the real world he thinks sacrificing your life for love is seldom done. Instead his wife has sacrificed her money and her country.

In the pages of novels that concern themselves with torrid, desperate love there is nothing of comfort. The sort that comes after years spent memorising the movements and traits of another. He knows when he wakes Cora will be curled on her side, her eyes closed as though in concentration, and her lips will be parted slightly as she breathes slowly and deeply. There are no moments like this in novels. Nothing as unremarkable as a woman of thirty-six sleeping.

The pages of novels are wrong. He knows because he and Cora would never traipse across a moor for each other, their love would never cause wars and they would certainly not have died had they been unable to be together. It is safe. It is boring. And Robert knows it is real and constant.

**5. Intense love.**

He never thought it possible to love something with the unprecedented strength that he loves his son. He loves his daughters, of course he does, but the thought of the small boy that will never be fills him with such painful disjointed shards of love that they spike into every part of him.

The boy fills his heart. Fills it with the pain and sorrow until it feels like it is constricting in on itself and the tightness in his chest will never be relieved. Occasionally he manages to feel the joy that he _did_ have a son and there _was_an heir but fate got in the way. Mostly it's just pain though.

His son attacks his stomach. The gut instinct that tells him his son would have been the answer to all his prayers – a boy to save Downton, a young man to bear his name and carry on the legacy of their great house. Mary could have married as she pleased and a young man thrust into the role would have been gifted with his life again. He would have final done his Mama proud and Rosamund would have had no more jokes and he would have named him for his Papa. But practicalities are one thing…he thinks of holding his son in his arms and weeps.

**6. Doomed love.**

"Robert, sometimes I truly don't understand you."

Cora shook her head in fond exasperation and kissed his cheek, finding it remarkably easy to turn around and wonder upstairs to take her mid-morning tea. He sniffed childishly and slumped into the seat by the fireplace, finally alone and slightly embittered at the thought of his wife rolling her eyes and telling her despicable maid how ridiculous she thought him.

But it was terrible, wasn't it, how quickly his wife could shrug off the death of someone who had been a part of their family for so many years now? True the two of them had never really warmed up to each other but they'd lived in the same house for fifteen years now and surely she must feel even the slightest hint of grief?

No one understood though. The girls had not been sympathetic - Mary rolled her eyes, Edith sipped her tea and Sybil looked at him as though he was quite mad – and even Carson, who he had been half-hoping would join him in sharing a moment of remembrance, had not sounded sincere when he offered his condolences.

No one understood that the love between a man and dog was precious!

**7. True, but imperfect love.**

He looks at them and the worst of it is that he still sees is the imperfections of them.

The first, most tellingly, they are all girls. Mary bore this the least, she was the first after all and he'd been sure there would be more opportunities. Edith bears it the worst – it should be Sybil really, but Sybil doesn't seem to mind anything much - but Edith is like her Mother and feels things far too deeply. He tries not to think on it too much. They're all healthy and that is the important thing and goodness knows he loves them, but they all must be very aware of how much he wished for a boy.

Edith's nose is ever so slightly crooked. He noticed when she was a baby and it was something he found rather charming, still does in fact, but he can see that the rest of the world might not. Mary is perfectly fair of face and gets all the attention during the season and he's not blinded by fatherly love enough to fool himself into seeing things from an outside perspective. He doesn't _want_to think of them like this but he has three girls to marry off and must think practically at times.

Mary, he knows, is undoubtedly the favoured of his daughters on the marriage market but he knows as well as anyone that all that glitters is not always golden and he watches her push away Evelyn Napier and Matthew in turn. He knows her flaw is her sharp tongue and he can't pretend it's an aspect of her he cares for himself.

Sybil steals the attention once more when she comes to town. Not as classically beautiful perhaps, but filled with an infectious spirit that drew people to her and fuelled her rapacious desire for life. He thinks of her recklessness and wishes he were able to look upon it with the indulgence Cora does – but the blood on his little girl's head made him wish she didn't possess such traits. Her spirit, that some think so wonderful, could be her ruin and he only hopes no one in society sees too much of it before she is safely settled. And who knows what she might do to her sister's chances?

He finds it easiest to see Edith's faults such as they are: compared to her sisters she has less physical advantages and she is in the unfortunate position of being between the much sought after Lady Mary and the new, exciting young thing in the pecking order of the marriage market. But he is very aware that Edith's problems are far from her own making. Sybil should control her recklessness, just as Mary should control her tongue, Edith can hardly help it if she is the middle born and doesn't have her Mother's features. She has Rosamund's.

Secretly, he thinks given the choice, he'd marry Edith.

End.

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><p>Please be kind, I'm new to Robert really! :)<p> 


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